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Old 4th May 2018, 01:36
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helonorth
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Originally Posted by Devil 49
A 168 nautical mile recovery leg implies at least that long in patient transport. Even without the usual time in sending, packaging the patient,, transferring care at the receiving, and no refuel stops, the flight would have had to depart base at 19:53 local. That might be the night pilot. But add a leg tpo sending facility to pick up patient, fuel stop(s) and the usual hospital time and a better estimate would be 1800 local- or earlier, thus the day pilot. Two or three hours at the transferring facility are not unusual. I've waited 6 hours a couple of times in 15 years of HEMS.

With Air Methods standard shift calendar, the day pilots start Thursday or Monday, work 4 day or 3 days and finish their 7-day duty period rotating to nights. It's reasonable to consider that this was the accident pilot's first day of a duty period. If so, the possibility of reporting fatigued starts to add up- AMC doesn't offer sleep facilities for pilots, the PIC may have a had a long commute and minimal rest before the duty day started, I know many pilots who drive 2, 3, 4 hours to report for the duty period- some longer.

I know a pilot who had a unanticipated sudden hydraulic failure (pesky switch!) in a 350B2 at a
low level high speed cruise at night. Had the event not occurred with a high level of cultural lighting giving him adequate surface orientation, I don't think he would have survived. But he is a very, very good pilot.... Even so the aircraft was down for a couple of days for thorough examination after exceeding a couple limitations.

I'm illuminating the possible contributing circumstances. This could well be a failure that never occurred before.
All the good EMS pilots cruise low level at high speed at night!
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